Crosstalk: September 8, 2017

Mat Staver is the founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, an international nonprofit litigation, education and policy organization dedicated to advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of human life and the family. Mat has over 230 published legal opinions. He's authored eight scholarly law review publications and ten books including 'Eternal Vigilance: Knowing and Protecting Your Religious Freedom'. He's the host and producer of the radio broadcasts, 'Faith and Freedom' and 'Freedom's Call'. He's argued two landmark cases before the United States Supreme Court.

Some Crosstalk listeners are aware of the fact that Liberty Counsel has been listed alongside the KKK and other white supremacist groups as being a hate group as branded by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Now it appears that Right Wing Watch, an organization that monitors Crosstalk, has taken Crosstalk's recent interview with Mat Staver completely out of context. Their headline that reads: 'Mat Staver: Anti-Gay Groups Being Treated Like Jews in Nazi Germany', has had other news sources picking up on this story as well.

Right Wing Watch is a project of People for the American Way, an organization founded by Norman Lear who's famous for the his involvement with the TV show, 'All in the Family'.

During a recent appearance on Crosstalk, Mat called for civil discourse as he lamented how the rhetoric had increased. That exactly what Right Wing Watch did. They came out with a fake headline with a linked recording that doesn't even match the title. Mat indicated that this doesn't matter because people don't read the article. People only read the title, they tweet and re-tweet and eventually a title like that becomes the news. The result is that Mat has received terrible messages that misrepresent his view concerning how the Nazi's even got to the level that they did.

Mat described how it began when the Nazis dehumanized the Jewish people, first through rhetoric; in other words, a stigmatizing of the Jewish people. That progressed until they ultimately reached the unspeakable atrocities of the holocaust.

Perhaps Mat's press release as read by Jim Schneider says it best:

'Right Wing Watch is a known purveyor of fake news which intentionally lies about the people it covers and has a clear agenda to denigrate and dehumanize its subjects. RWW has people listening to every Christian radio broadcast and then prints statements out of context using outrageous titles for its articles that are not true. RWW creates these false article titles so that they can be tweeted and re-tweeted.'

Not one media source bothered to call or e-mail either Jim Schneider or Mat Staver asking whether the story was true or not before it was distributed. So any of the other organizations who put this story out for public consumption without first verifying its authenticity are just as bad as Right Wing Watch.